To defoliate, or not to defoliate?

My best results have always come from defoliate plants. I don’t defoliate the whole plant at once. I’ll slowly remove the fan leaves over the course of a couple weeks or more, focusing on those covering bud sites. Yes fan leaves are a source of energy via photosynthesis, however after 14 days their ability to photosynthesize light begins to degrade. There comes a point where the plant is expending more energy to keep the leaf alive, than the leaf is providing. It also promotes better air flow throughout the tent. My last autoflower yielded 504g dry, and there wasn’t a fan leaf left on it for the last month or more of its life

The only way to divert energy is by removing new branching before they form so the for elswhere. Lolipoping isent going to do much. But if yiu lollipop withour removing any fanleaf then iy will.. oeople have lost the touch of screenof green over the years. I remember they used to creat at tich 1 feet of canopy of leaf and pop out any brache and new nide growth withing this and out a second net above that then level the canooy flip and atach the budding site so all the solar panel do there job. .. now people look at the conopy and onve they see it touch that it.. if you put a leaf above another leaf that leaf under still gets light the light dosent just hit a wall and then vanish or get sucked in by the leaf above... All the light within that 1 feet of canopy gets absorb.. if you want bigger tight nuggs you keeo every fanleaf you can and remove all useless buddinh site befire the form into unwanted branches. That why a lit of people remove sucker

I'm convinced the ladies need a good defoliation now and again. They love it and perk right up after a good defoliation . As long as your keeping some solar panels and not completely stripping it . They live a good de leaf. In my experience .

Ibdint defoliate much. I remove sucker that will not produce what i desire before they tur into a usele branch with few popcorn and try to leave the fanleaf untouch. It possibble to make buddybsite grow taller with technic and aving a bed of fanleaf. I only remove if there is a chance of bad flow that can cause mildew and such. But i try to deal with this issu diffrently.. the olant will grow mucb biger faster without remouvingbanything in my opinion. Itherwise you are left with half size fanleaf in flowering

Hooray, I have found a fellow non "de-leafer" in FishHead_MediaMan! Removing healthy, green leaves is a mis-guided attempt by humans to think they know better than a plant that has been evolving for 100s of thousands of years to become the best flower grower that it can be. Every healthy, green leaf you remove will reduce your plants ability to produce energy, energy that it needs to grow its best. Only yellow leaves should be removed, for by the time that they are yellow, they have served their purpose. Removing healthy green leaves will actually slow growth, especially during flowering. After removing healthy, green leaves, your plants first "instinct" is to grow new leaves to replace the loss in energy production. So while you think you see more growth, that growth would be even bigger, had the plant not been forced to grow new healthy green leaves and branches too. All the energy would have gone into branch growth, not branch and new leaf growth sharing the energy. As for the other mis-guided notion of plants "channelling energy" into bud growth, this simply can not happen. All energy produced is used throughout the plant. The plant does not have a brain or little policemen directing energy flow to specific areas. The bud sites that people think they are exposing to more light by removing healthy green leaves, are actually relying on those healthy green leaves for the energy to be made, so that the buds/flowers can grow. There is no way the small "bud leaves" can produce as much energy as just one big healthy green "fan leaf". Further to this, cannabis being the smart plant that it is, also uses vital elements such as carbs, sugars, starches, amino acids etc that it "stores" in those big, green healthy leaves, to be used when flowering. It is much more efficient for the plant to re-use these stored elements during flowering, than it is to make them from new during flowering. This is why during flowering, leaves will go yellow on otherwise well fed and healthy plants. It's all about efficiency. By re-using elements stored in the older leaves, the plant can use more of the energy produced for flower growth and not have to divide the energy between flower growth and sugar/carb/amino acid etc renewal. So, to sum up; fewer healthy green leaves = less energy produced = lesser amounts of readily available (previously stored) growth elements = slower and smaller growth. In 35+ years of growing cannabis, I have never seen a plant that gets rid of its healthy green leaves for no apparent reason. Your plant strives to grow her biggest and best flowers. This requires as much energy as possibly available. Having as many healthy green leaves as possible will enable maximum energy production. Leaf removal not only reduces energy production, it also deprives your plant of vital growth elements. Try leaving the healthy green leaves, you may be surprised by how much faster and larger her flowers will become! After all, she has been doing it for Millenia unaided and with all her leaves in place.. Hope this helps.... Organoman.

I would say NO. You want to keep as many large fan leaves around the outside as possible. Constantly trimming (especially too much) will potentially stunt growth if over done and if not done correctly will not do much more than cause your plant to stretch in an attempt to create more leaves. But why try to make more new fan leaves when the majority of your leaves are small and immature. You plant looks like it wants a week or 2 before you touch it. It is going to stretch whether you trim or not. You always need to have a REASON to trim a leaf. You have almost zero large mature fan leaves and a lot of areas growing small leaves. you don't want to be able to see through the plant to the bottom. Now you MIGHT have a few problems leaves in the middle, (not saying I see any) but at this point I would do nothing. I would prioritize honing in your feed and separating the stalks as best as possible and ensuring the grow environment is at top notch. You can always defoliate later and your plant is not so big that it will be too difficult if you let it go an extra week. I suggest finding some video's on Defoliation from people like Kyle Kushman. www.youtube.com/watch (not sure if links are allowed Sorry if not!)

I wouldn't necessarily defoliate but I would recommend lollipoping her a little. I would take anything off the branches before the 3rd node on the branch.